


Miscellaneous Snippets: Areum

by marcustyphoon



Category: Guild Wars 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-11
Updated: 2015-12-11
Packaged: 2019-08-11 16:08:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16478705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marcustyphoon/pseuds/marcustyphoon
Summary: A few snippets I've written about my necromancer.





	1. Chapter 1

It was an ordinary part of life as a necromancer to get the strange looks, the cautious shying-away, the occasional comment you weren’t supposed to hear about how maybe you’d be more comfortable if your patient died, after all. Because “necro” means “death,” and that’s pretty much all anyone needs to know to steer well clear. And it really wouldn’t be polite to mention out of the blue that necromancy is not so much an obsession with death at the expense of life, and more an intense familiarity with the line separating the two - the understanding that the line cannot be broken in a gruesome violation of the laws of nature like the grave-robbing stories told in the schoolyard, but that with a careful hand, the line can be found. Felt. Persuaded to shift ever so slightly one way or another.

“He’s in bad shape,” says one of the countless nurses, wheeling a sheet-covered gurney into the operating room with a decidedly unoptimistic grimace. Lifting the bloodstained fabric reveals the unconscious body of a Charr, stripped of armor and sporting among countless other injuries a brutal gash practically down his side, dirt and clotted blood and what looks worryingly like a liquid poison soaking the sad excuse at a battlefield dressing. “They probably joked I’d want his body for a minion,” Areum thinks, as she orders the nurse away to obtain and apply an intense sedative. As she places her hand over the largest wound, closing her eyes, she can feel the heat radiating from damaged tissue, the ragged breathing indicating extreme shock, the Charr’s weak but regular heartbeat. She can feel the sharp nerve impulses of broken ribs, the raw pain of broken skin, and the deep ache of a shard of metal piercing a vital organ. This one is right on the boundary, dancing between life and death.

Areum opens her eyes and takes a scalpel from her nearby tray. The dirty cloth dressing cuts away easily, letting her touch the wounded tissue, fingertips pulsing slightly with a faint energy.

“Show me where to cut,” she thinks. “Show me the line between death and life.”


	2. Chapter 2

“I don’t know if I’d call it at ease around death, exactly.” Areum pauses to exchange her sharpening stone for a finer one before resuming the back and forth motion of her scalpel blade against the rough surface. “Death is scary because it’s so… final. Because once someone goes to the mists, they don’t come back. Having this magic - ” She launches a faint puff of life force upwards into the air with her fingertips - “doesn’t make that any less scary. All it means is that it’s my fault when it happens. That I could have prevented it, if I were more skilled. More powerful.”

She examines her blade closely, the metal now polished to a reflective shine. Using it as a mirror, she can catch a glimpse of her companion’s purple leaves in the blade before she sets it in a tub of water, satisfied with her work. “I know there’s minions,” she continues, “but it’s no magic resurrection, or anywhere close. I’m not given the power to reverse fate, only to stay its hand, or make some use of what it leaves behind. Maybe if I were a druid, I’d grow little forest friends, but bone minions… they just die again. And I feel responsible for their fates.”

“Or, come to think of it…” She looks up at Lyra. “I guess mesmers sort of have that power, too. To create life, I mean - at least for a while. It sounds nice, somehow. The life you make… it’s fragile, but it’ll always come back, as beautiful as always.”


	3. Chapter 3

“The real problem? Bloodstained, rusty knives just aren’t that frightening,” Areum groused. “Sure, they can make you think ‘murderer’ or ‘bloodborne disease,’ but be honest: if it isn’t sharp, it’s not much of a threat. And any old wannabe mass murderer who’s not diligent enough to keep their machete clean and dry won’t be keeping it properly sharp, either. It just doesn’t show commitment, is what I’m saying. Don’t you think?”

“Um…” Her sister hesitated, blasting a wave of plastic spiders off of herself with a hand gesture and a gust of wind. “What—”

“And this chainsaw nonsense, also,” she continued, disarming a skeleton by smashing it into a wall and using its greatsword to decapitate another. “I’m not a tree! I could understand it if Prince-and-or-King Thorn were just trying to scare the britches off any sylvari in the area, but they’re both, what, 500 years old? We’ve only had plant-people for 30! What did this guy do in the centuries in between, jump out at you and yell, ‘deforestation leads to climate change’?” A gargoyle swooped at her, claws outstretched, and she tried to hurl it back through the nearest haunted door with a muttered, “Off, you.”

Haneul tossed a bolt of lightning wide to the left of a large mummy, accidentally detonating a stray pumpkin. “I don’t think I… what? Honestly, sis, sometimes I have no idea what in Tyria you’re talking about.”


End file.
